Spirit Rolls on Mars

Irishman writes "It looks like the Spirit rover has finally left the womb and is rolling free on the Martian surface. Space.com has the full story and some great pictures." NASA also has photos, straight from their fake set in Hollywood where they produce all the "space" footage.

Re:Revisit Sojourner!

[mOoZik]

The batteries can only recharge a certain number of times. Furthermore, there is no way of cleaning the solar panels, so they lose their efficiency over time. That's probably what contributed to its death and you're making a big deal out of a piece of crap rover.

Re:Nice Article Summary...

[PhxBlue]

it's jackass commentary like this that does nothing but perpeptuate bullshit to the masses and misinforms that average (read stupid) american. then the average (read stupid again) american's think these things are a waste of money.

Right, and how many "average Americans" do you know who (A) read Slashdot and (B) won't pick up the sarcasm in the original statement?

It's humor (though I'll agree, it's not really funny). Don't sweat it.

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"NASA also has photos, straight from their fake set in Hollywood where they produce all the "space" footage."

I really hope you were being sarcastic. Otherwise, I think you're too ignorant to be controlling the flow of useful information.

But then, it's Slashdot...

Re:Revisit Sojourner!

[Maarek_1]

I think the problem with this is that it would require something that isn't just on a one-way trip ending in a crash landing on the planet's surface. That would require development of a new type of lander and something capable of carrying the full weight of the old lander.

I doubt that NASA has the funds or enough desire to go through all this to recover the craft.

Kinda sad though

Re:Revisit Sojourner!

[marksven]

It's not like Sojourner is going anywhere. I'm sure when we've mastered interplanetary flight to the point that it's just routine, we'll probably go back to all the left-behind probe carcasses to do some kind of forensic study and make monuments out of them for the tourists to see.

Why Moving the Rover Was Dangerous

[zapp]

* Driving over the balloons is more dangerous than martian terrain. They could get caught in the wheels.

* Suppose some part of the rover had been broken on landing, but had not surfaced yet because it had not moved. Think of a broken neck - it doesn't cause paralysis until you move and sever your nerves.

* Take advantage of a controlled situation. They wanted to take advantage of a controlled situation for as long as they could. From the lander they could take panoramic pictures from a sligh elevation. They could atmospheric measurements, etc. All this could be done without the adding the possible failure points introduced by moving the rover.

* The lander has more solar panels and perhapse some better communication hardware. Might as well take advantage of them while you're there.

I just pulled those off the top of my head. I'm sure there are better reasons and it's been discussed here before. Will you people stop bickering about them taking too long to move it?

How's this: Give me 3 equally good reasons why they should have hurried to get it off the lander.

Sniff a rock!

[Tablizer]

I think they should hurry up and do a close-up analysis of a rock rather than worry about long-distance jaunts. If it croaks in a few days, not having analyzed a single rock up close would be a shame.

Re:Revisit Sojourner!

[onyxruby]

Dumb question, why no wiper blades? I've heard it said that wiper blades would damage the solar panels. However if the solar panels are too dust covered to work anyways, what's the loss? It's not like they're going back for warranty repair.

Re:flimsy looking

[enjo13]

Wow, a monday morning robot designer..

If you could do all of that, and deliver a package with the neccesary weight, size, and other various launch/flight/deployment constraints.. then you would be (by far) the best robot designer on the planet. Ohh ya, and be able to do all of those things reliably on an alien world millions of miles away.

These are smart people (I've had the privilige of working with two of them), that are well aware of all of those possibilities. The realities of design have to come into play at some point, and that's how these things really come about.

Re:the waiting is over ---but

[lynx_user_abroad]

Why not get some very small solid rocket engines and put them facing in all directions on this thing.

A common reaction to the realization of a vulnerability is to add complexity to address the vulnerability. This is often a bankrupt strategy.

Wouldn't you feel silly if the "next ones" incorporated exactly this suggestion, and were unusable upon landing because "a small rocket engine, included to address the possibility of a rover getting stuck, ignited on re-entry and destroyed several critical components..."

On projects like this, every gram of hardware costs pounds of fuel, every contingincy plan requires man-weeks of meetings, and every non-essential task added to the process list amounts to a lost opportunity for a once-in-a-lifetime experiment. The last thing you want is find youself facing actual mission failure because of some contingency you put in place to address a possible mission failure.

All the more proof

[ChiefScientist]

of what can be achieved with robots.

Honestly, what would we gain by sending humans?

Re:All the more proof

[dubious9]

Uh... to gain insight on how we can live on other planets. Life on earth is doomed, but it just won't happen (sun expanding) for a long long time. Take into account the chance of life extinguishing asteriods hitting earth, and I'd think that people would want to ensure the survivability of the species.

Face it, the earth is fragile and life on it only temporary until we figure out how to live without it.

Not to mention that humans doing experiments on mars GREATLY reduces the latency. How long does a round trip signal take? I could go on and on about why we want humans on mars.

Re:Revisit Sojourner!

[AKAImBatman]

Well, they *are* radio-active

But safe enough to hold with gloves...

and there is a small chance that one could burst from launch errors...

The odds that one would burst are about as close to zero as they get. The RTG itself is sealed inside a "black box" type of shielding. The stuff is strong enough to survive reentry from orbit! An explosion of the rocket wouldn't even phase it (as past launch failures have shown).

...end up polluting a populated area.

Actually, that's why NASA launches over the ocean. If something does fail, it falls into an unpopulated area (i.e. miles of water).

I agree that the risk is tiny, but it does exist.

You have a greater chance of getting cancer from your cell phone battery.

Noboby sane claims they explode into mushroom clouds.

You'll love this guy [slashdot.org]. He still hasn't taken me up on my "nuclear challenge". I wonder why? ;-)

Mars Express

[Anonymous Coward]

Has an awesome instrument package. I'm particularly chuffed (is that the right Brit-speak?) about the soil-penetrating radar. That should be -very- useful in all sorts of ways, but especially in plumbing the cryosphere, might even tell us if the hydrogen signatures in equatorial regions (like Gusev) are due to aquifer pressure where there is no cryosphere.

NASA and American Mars-nuts are bummed about Beagle. And the mole was a very cool device.